How Millennials Lack Of Manners Is Killing Class

You’re about to walk into a building and the girl in front of you just let’s the door go behind them and slam in your face; she didn’t even attempt to hold it open. She’s probably the same person who doesn’t thank the barista and has that slight condescending tone in her voice. Where did manners go? Did the words “thank you” and “please” get lost in the dictionary somewhere? I’m not just pointing the finger at our generation but to all generations. Our society has become so involved with ourselves, so caught up in our wants and needs, that we feel we have this right to treat others anyway we want.

Working at Panera means I come in contact with a lot of different people, and what shocks me the most is how rude people can be. Anyone in the food industry, retail, or any customer service industry knows what I’m talking about. There is no excuse for rudeness. Even if you’ve had a horrible day, you’re in a rush, or whatever other excuse you want to justify your actions with, it does not give you the right to be rude.

Being rude is a cop-out to not take the time to have a conversation with someone. It has to do with our society needing “instant gratification.” We want everything right now. We have everything at our fingertips with our iPhones, tablets, etc. that immediately give us the information we want when we ask for it; so when we have to communicate with an actual human being who can’t immediately give us the information or service we’re asking for we become impatient, cranky, and needy. News flash: you can’t always get what you want.

This “instant gratification” also is what leads to selfishness. Everyone seems to be obsessed with what he or she wants or needs to make their life better. This selfish attitude contributes to the false authority people think they have over one another, which then causes us to treat each other without respect. For some reason we forget that everyone wants the same basic things: to be happy, to be loved, to be successful. We think we’re the only ones that want these things so we treat others as if they’re obstacles in our way rather than actual people who operate the same way as us.

Manners go much further than just holding a door open or saying “please.” They let others know that you acknowledge them; that you see them and consider them an equal to you. In a society where it seems the majority of us deal with some sort of self-esteem issue (putting multiple selfies on social media for likes? That can’t be healthy), these small acts of kindness can really go a long way.

As you can tell, I dislike rude people. When you think about all those times someone was short with you, said something hurtful without cause, or just treated you like a second-class citizen, it hurt. We know it hurts when other people do it to us, so why do we make excuses when we’re rude to others? Why are we so involved in our own little worlds that we forget that we aren’t the only ones living in this world?

You are no better than the person next to you. You have no authority to be rude to others and treat them as you want. Everyone is someone. Each person has value and us treating each other with harsh comments or rude manners is stripping people of knowing this value. So next time you’re walking into a building take a second and look behind you and give that extra time to hold the door open, maybe you’ll even meet you’re soulmate.

19 COMMENTS

I see a dramatic switch in civility but my reasons for this happening are different than those suggested in this article.

I was actually trying to understand the utter rudeness by millennial and came across this article. Yes, it is 2015. I have looked at other articles and I don’t’ think the real issues are being addressed. The real issues are solutions are not politically correct. Distinct roles are being rejected to the point where guys want to believe they are females – complete with showering and undressing with them in a girl’s locker room despite the fact they have MALE anatomy! Things have gotten to be bizarre! There appears to be a total rejection of what is normal.

I have a very different take on it. IMO, most millennials were not raised by stay at home moms. In my time it was the norm to have mom be at home and dad be the breadwinner. It was considered shameful for mom to have to work and supplement dad or worse yet be the chief bread winner. We had defined roles. Mom would TEACH them manners and reinforce them too. Kids were happier and more confident then compared to what I see now. There were more intact families too.

Today kids are typically deposited at a secular daycare center. With so many to watch, the little niceties that were normally taught by mom or family were reinforced on a one on one basis have disappeared. People working at daycare centers are typically paid minimum wage. Sure the directors and low level management if it is a franchise are paid well but those on the front lines dealing directly with the kids are paid very little. Their main task is to keep them moving and busy. Teaching them MANNERS and social niceties are just not on the list UNLESS it affects them directly like RAISE YOUR HAND to answer a question. Niceties like thank you, you’re welcome, please, may I, can I help you, bless you when someone sneezes etc, are ignored. Secular daycare centers are NOT teaching any of that and there is very little discipline there. One main reason why is parents don’t want OTHERS disciplining their kids and are easily offended.

I stayed home with for my kids. We didn’t use daycare. We did allow them to attend a Christian preschool for two years. It was for half days. One year it was Tuesday and Thursday and the last year of it was Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9-12. There kids had manners we taught at home reinforced at school. Discipline was also enforced. Later they attended a private Christian school from K-12. Again MANNERS were expected. Social skills were encouraged. Cell phones were checked in with the teacher and retrieved at the end of the day. A guy was encouraged to HELP a girl. For example, rather than ignore or laugh at a girl that dropped her books, a guy was encouraged or even TOLD to help her gather them up. A guy was shown how to pull out a chair for a girl to sit in. This was the culture there.

I recently had to spend some time at a local public school. I was absolutely horrified at how they behaved, dressed and general interaction with each other and adults. There was absolutely NO respect or regard for others. Their language was atrocious. They dressed worse than hookers from the 80’s in NYC on 42nd street and allot of the guys wore prison style jeans (no belt, low crotch and hem too long). Their general appearance was unkempt. Honestly it was what I imagined a third world country to be like when it came to education. I won’t venture into my opinion of what they were being taught in classes. There also seems to be this narcissistic fantasy like demeanor. You’ll see kids in expensive clothes but it’s overdone. Let me give you an easy example of what I mean. In France they have bike races and they wear special apparel for comfort and speed. From my perspective I wouldn’t spend hundreds of dollars for my kids to tool around the neighborhood on their bikes wearing the designer biking outfits so they could look “cool” and live a fantasy of being a Tour De France bicycler. What I also observed is they are super sensitive when it comes to themselves and very INsensitive to others and very uninterested in their academics.

What I have noticed is private school kids, are forced to develop their social skills more because of being more strict. They are also taught to BE sensitive to others. Rudeness and selfishness are not allowed. From little on they have incentives (points that lead to prizes) to NOT be rude and selfish to others. What I saw at the public school would NEVER be allowed there. The private school had a strict dress and grooming code, uniform, behavior requirements and great role models for teachers. Kids get used to taking pride in their appearance because it is required there. It becomes a part of them. The social niceties are also required there – please, thank you, may I etc.. so that also becomes a part of them. When you eliminate this from K-12 as in a public school, and other raising kids other than family members I don’t think it should be a surprise that kids are becoming more and like rude, selfish, savages. In general they also lack INDIVIDUAL confidence. When I look at how my kids turned out and their friends, I have no doubt we did what was right for our kids. This is not your typical “generation gap” going on. These kids were really raising themselves from an early age.

“Prison style jeans” hahah how old are you (in decades)?
Please, tell me more about how poor people are terrible for having to work and not being able to afford private school.
PS: there are dozens of gods. How are you so sure that the one who really hates shrimp is real?

And there we have it — proof for anyone who had doubts the article is true. check out the last 2 posts. One example is pretending to laugh at someone when you are actually intimidated or fearful about their ideas. How dare someone say you are not polite, those dumb but hilarious traditionalists!

That pretending to find humor in order to cover up anger or fear is outdtated. This is the not the O era, and we don’t need to make fun (or pretend to, as a silencing tactic) of others anymore.

Second, the idea that the 50s were a horrible era is something most kids seem to believe, and they couldn’t be more wrong. But who really knows about that period — those who have been taught or those who lived through it? Ask anyone who lived through it, and they’ll tell you.

Those ARE “prison-style” jeans — Ask your soc prof. Ghetto culture came when ex-cons brought it back to the neighborhood — the sagging, the “no disrespectin’,” the rapping, the “b—-” and “wh—” language, graphic violence and sex in speech — all prison culture.

Finally, the left gives itself and its hatred away in so many ways, but one of the most prominent is bringing up Christianity (never islam) in their comments. Or is that the Jews you are bringing up for no reason? That would be no surprise, either.

There — some talking points your parents evidentally never told you. Too bad. But it did allow us all to see how socially inept you are.

P.S. Just because late night comedy slurs somebody and everyone hoots and pretends to laugh, doesn’t mean that ugly slurs are funny.

Look no further than the movie “Idiocracy” by Mike Judge. It’s ABSOLUTE TRUTH!

But my personal answer is: Millennial kid’s parents are Uneducated Idiots who have babies by the ripe old age of thirteen. They learned NOTHING from their parents and in turn teach their kids NOTHING. That’s THREE GENERATIONS RIGHT THERE of pure unadulterated sucks / drains on society. Just a bunch of entitled little bastards running around fornicating with each other while learning nothing. Never voting or believing in anything that isn’t on the phone in their faces. Disrespecting their elders and doing whatever they please without the fear of consequences. Not to mention nobody born after 1998 truly learn how to drive a car! Because cars are “smart” now and include WiFi!!! So you put a 16-20 year old behind the wheel of a 3,000 pound wrecking ball that drives itself, and STILL TEXTING AND DRIVING and talking on their phones rather than paying attention. EVERY TIME I DRIVE I FEAR FOR MY LIFE. Oh and then these turds flip me off for having the right of way! Or when I honk at them as they are closing in on my car and about to hit me, they immediately lay on their horn to notify you they don’t give a F*** about your life. PAY ATTENTION TO HORN HONKS when you go out next. I bet a trillion dollars the first car that uses their horn for safety reasons gets honked back at and flipped off. Anyway.
One of my absolute favorites is the long winded missives lacking any form of punctuation just rambling on calling people dumass rather than dumb ass when typing they tlk lik ths nw n we r spps 2 undrstnds it lik it means n e thang dumass u must be stoopid cuz u r a fag yes fag bcuz they thnk calln u fag is ok not okay 2 do n get mad @ u 4 corcting there gramer I h8 these brats.

Okay sorry. I had to.
Don’t use Birth Control or Contraception of any kind. Drop out of School and work fast food or warehouse work for a career. Abuse alcohol (alcohol is a crime by the way) abuse your spouse and children all while collecting government assistance and finding ways to sell it so you can smoke cigarettes and drink beer. Good night kiss? What’s that? I’ll give you a good night blowjob no problem.

Wow, guess you got told. It’s 2017 just beat the heck out of you with his brilliant debate points. Wow.

What does this bizarre thing some people do with “This is ———“? That doesn’t have anything to do with much of anything — take manners, for instance. Are they supposed to be unfashionable now?

Naw, it’s just that the elites insist upon it and send their kids to schools that insist upon it and let the other kids do whatever, to help widen the gap between “rulers” and “ruled. Too bad that doesn’t occur to the kids who don’t get manners training and who go through life being rude and low-class in behavior and speech.

Working in a customer service job, the nicest customers (say please and thank you, ask about my day, make donations to the charities we’re fundraising for) are the ones around age 30 and below. The ones most likely to complain or cause a scene and curse over small things like a long checkout line during peak store hours or running out of napkins in the deli are white men between ages 45-65. Seriously, this holds true for 90% of the customers that fall into those two groups.

the first two commenters are biased idiots with no actual facts behind them (ps rates of teen pregnancy have been falling since the 1990s. also a fourth of fathers to children born to mothers between 15-16 are aged 24-28. ie. the problem with teen pregnancy? has a lot more to do with a misogynistic and pedophilic society as a whole than any one age group. yes you, are equally as responsible if you push either ideology).
Anyway, if you’ve ever read any other accounts by ppl in service industries, you’d note that many of them call out white men 45+ as some of the rudest people on earth. also, soccer moms with the tacky highlights and children named Brayden.
Furthermore, I hope you’re still in high school because this article reads like a long winded teenage rant – particularly a teenager who hasn’t learned to question their parents. your piece is uncritical and full of emotion, where opinion is presented like fact. you buy into popular notions without taking the time to dissect them and blame everything on Millenials without ever getting around to why they’re to blame. for a lot of the technologies you reference, acting as if they were Frankenstein’s monster, they were created by gen-Xers. if you want anyone to blame, blame yourself.
sincerely,
a millenial
also, a PSA to the guy who throws around the word fornication… I hope you know no one takes you seriously. also when will people stop quoting idiocracy like it’s law. you’re not as smart as you think.

Pretty sure you justified Ned’s comment by stating that “soccer moms” and “45+ old men” as being some of the rudest people. They are the one’s that spawned the Millennial generation, no? And do we not become our parents at some point in life whether we like it or not?

Take note of something — you’ll see it everywhere, once you notice it. There’ll be an article about a subject. Some people, raised right, will answer on topic and politely — like the one who disagreed above, but made her point well. Then you have the other group.

While everyone else is talking on topic and if negative, being negative to those being written about in the article, this group attacks the last commenter personally, instead! They never learned to debate subjects — only to insult the person, if that person says something they don’t like. The name-calling, off topic, because someone had different experiences than you, is appalling. It shows that there is at least some truth in the article — and the people doing it do not even see that they are proving the point — so along with a lack of manners, there’s a lack of thought.

For better debate, argue about the topic, not the last commenter you disagreed with. “You” and “your” should not appear; if it does, that means the person is pretending they have the ability to mindread and characterize the qualities of someone they have never met and have only read a few paragraphs from.

It’s not that hard. We all have a tendency to take things personally, but try to remind yourself that the commenter you are angry at might be a nice person, maybe someone you’d like very much if you met, someone who does good for others — and that there’s no reason to try to demean the messenger when the message disagrees with your own. Okay?

I just had a FB debate with two millenials over a recurring incident at much husbands coffee shop. Every single morning for weeks a HS teen came into his coffee shop with a large Dunkins Donuts coffee. Without ever making a purchase in my husbands shop, the young man would proceed to sit in his shop and drink the Dunkins coffee he bought at a competitor. This went on daily until.my asked to stop. I said I thought this was very rude. Thesee two women actually defended him. They said it was in no way rude and that it was perfectly okay to bring item into another shop . They say nothing ill mannered about it. They said my husband must be insecure or having real problems if it bothered him. One of these ladies worked at Panera. Either this generation is one of the rudest ever or maybe I’m just getting old.

That is kind of rude to do. You should patronize the shop you sit in. But there is a disturbing trend of people of ALL ages using coffee shops as their personal office without buying anything or thinking one coffee entitles you to a whole day of sitting in a shop. All though, I wouldn’t bother confronting them, because it is seen as normal now.

[…] those too. Wait, there does not appear to be any reasoning to millennial habits. How can they both be the generation with the worst good manners , however likewise consumed with political accuracy and not angering anybody ? Why, it’s […]